I’ve long been a fan of the Secunia vulnerability scanning and patching alert tools, known as the Personal Software Inspector (PSI) in its free for individual, at-home use version, and the Corporate Software Inspector (CSI) in its for-a-fee version for workplace use. A beta version of the next generation of PSI has been out for at least a couple of months now, but I finally got around to installing and working with this tool, and I very much liked what I saw (warning: on one of my 64-bit test machines, I had to explicitly use the right-click “Run as administrator” option to get the program to install properly; be prepared should this happen to you, or should you encounter difficulties the second time you run the program).

Here’s a snap-by-snap recitation of the install and first run processes for this nice piece of software, available for download as the PSI 2.0 BETA:

The installer is smart enough to catch and replace the prior PSI version

Next the installer begins the actual PSI 2.0 installation

But first the old 1.5.x PSI version must be rooted out

The obligatory EULA screen requires your assent

The best new feature in PSI 2.0 is auto-update so it gets turned on by default

When non-admin users run PSI this lets them see what it is doing

An interesting technique to flag the readme file for user attention

The default install location is usually fine

Installation goes pretty quickly (less than a minute)

Next comes a request to run the program for a first time

A status box shows the connectivity check and rules download

The initial screen shows a reworked dashboard

The revised scan window uses the same dashboard layout

Overall, the new layout is cleaner and the software is more user-friendly

In terms of overall functionality — except for the program’s new auto-update facility, which allows it to handle downloading and installing updates without requiring user interaction — there isn’t much else new about the 2.0 beta version of PSI. What is new, however, is a complete reworking of the user interface that is much cleaner and easier to follow and that does away with the former versions’s Simple and Advanced UI modes, probably because the redesign makes that distinction moot. Check out the program and see what you think: I’m looking forward to the commercial release myself!

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